Part 53: Interim Report: The Gang's All Here

Interim Report: The Gang’s All Here

Okay, today I’m going to talk about our final party member a bit, and then tangent off to some of the awesome skills people get in the endgame that I sort of glossed over last time.

Viese:
So, Viese is the best caster in the game by far. She’s got healing skills and skills that interact with Alchemy. Let’s talk about them a bit.

<Metal> Hand Healing: Viese has three single target heals that have increasing effects and also dispel negative effects (which effects depends on the level). These are generally inefficient uses of skill gauge, Gold Hand Healing is just way too expensive for one target for example.

Bless of Rain/Healing Drop/Healing Rain: These are Time Effect heals. While even Healing Rain isn’t really strong enough to provide all the healing you’ll need in the late game they can still be very helpful tools for keeping people high enough that they can be properly healed.

Elemental Extraction: This skill tries to Elemental Extract an enemy, killing it in one hit and turning it into raw elements. There is a multi-target version as well, Wide Extraction, and a more powerful version called Mega Extraction. This mainly only works on weak enemies, and by that point you’re getting a similar effect off of Viese’s normal attacks.

Wide Item: This skill lets Viese turn any Item in stock into a multi-target item for one skill gauge. It’s really quite awesome, it lets you use lots of the items that would be awesome if they didn’t take so long to apply to your whole party or to the whole enemy party and just blast them out.

Living Item: This skill lets you ‘save’ an item for use whenever it is ‘needed’ later. The idea is that you use Living Item with a healing item and when someone needs it the item triggers and heals them. It’s kind of weird and not really worth using most of the time.

Power Item: So you’re probably wondering why I say Viese is the best character. Well here it is. Power Item takes an item you have in stock and uses it with a substantial power increase. With the right items Power Item lets you hit five damn digits in a single whack, because Viese is already powerful with magic even before a multiplicative gain.

Viese’s main downside is that she’s the most fragile character in your party, you’ll definitely want to keep her using that Aroma Material she was given at the start and whatever your best other accessory is. So let’s sum this up:

Offensive Power: Okay
Defensive Power: Poor
Magic Power: Apocalyptic
Utility: Great
Overall Evaluation: Just toss that Azoth to her Felt, god.

So, let’s talk about what people other than Viese bring to the party at this point in the game.

Felt:
Felt’s got Mana Synthesis, which is still awesome even though it’s less necessary since Viese can also do it. He also doesn’t have access to his best skills until we repair the Azoth and unlock the last couple of weapons for him, but we’ll still talk about his best stuff here.

Extra Blow: This was the passive skill he got from the Viese Charm, and it lets him straight hit twice during a regular attack. Felt’s regular attacks are one of his biggest strengths and this capitalizes on them.

Self Buffs: Felt’s got some solid buffs for himself, though since we can’t really have more than one active at a time I’ll discuss them together. Mana Weapon makes your regular attacks exploit the enemy’s weaknesses, which is pretty awesome. Mana Shield protects you from elemental hits and negative effects, which is again nice. Blue Energy is, if I recall right, a strong buff like Crimson Ambition (though not as good).

Final Edge: This is Felt’s big ticket move in the endgame. It hits an enemy with a bunch of Azoths, so it succeeds both in damage and combo count.

Toughness: Felt’s not as tough as Gray but he’s still pretty solid and a good choice for the front line.

Noin:
Noin is one of the weaker characters, but she does bring a few really cool things that can often be justified. She’s also super fast, which is nice.

Blasts: These skills can hit things immune to physical attacks, which is always important. There are lots of trash enemies this late that can’t be hit by physicals.

Noin Combo: If you’ve got an abundance of skill gauge this is a strong single target attack, though it’s not as good as the real big stick three skill attacks.

Healing Light: This dispels negative effects from the party, which is a great deal for one skill gauge and sometimes worth having Noin right there.

Adreniline: This is a big self-buff for Noin, it makes her stronger and faster. It’s a bit expensive but if the enemy can’t dispel it can pay for itself sometimes.

Gray:
Gray is still big, still super tough, still slow. Let’s talk about what he’s bringing to the party.

Dragon Ruin: This attack does brutal single target damage to an enemy. It’s Gray’s best move against something that isn’t a ‘dark’ type enemy. And against such an enemy?

Infernal Blade: This attack does massive damage to enemies with high dark resistance, which is a lot of them later on. It’s Gray’s biggest stick and one of the few attacks that can even compete with Viese’s best moves damage wise.

Ridiculous Toughness: Gray is by far the toughest character and will live through crazy crap that would kill anyone else, enough said really.

Fee:
Fee still brings crazy high Combo counts, and now she has the most powerful physical moves in the game.

Ein Zecksclaw/Zeckslash: The first two Ein Zecks moves are worth mentioning because when you really need something to die and have a skill gauge or two up they’re one of your best bets. Six hits for a bunch of damage each is never a bad choice. On really tough targets, though, maybe you do want to save up…

Ein Zecksdance: This is where the attack turns up the crazy. This unleashes a massive number of attacks on a single target, outclassing the Endless Blade by far on such an enemy. The best physical attack in the game, that’s just how it is.

Shadow End: Shadow End is an interesting skill, it does a bunch of damage but then backlashes some to Fee. It’s a good choice for targets that Ein Zecksdance is not appropriate against.

Avatar: This buff is cheaper for much of the same effect as Noin’s Adrenaline and will be buffing up far superior attacks, it’s one of the few I use quite a lot.

Poe:
Poe has a few things that actually do make him unique and awesome but it’s Poe. I mean come on.

Group Hits: Poe’s got most of the best skills for killing groups of enemies, especially if they’re vulnerable to Fire.

Status Effects: Poe can cause status effects with a lot of skills, which is nice but sadly most things that are worthwhile are immune.

Feint Shot: This is literally why you bring Poe to a fight. He will sometimes shoot an enemy before they act, damaging them and cancelling their turn. This is crazy awesome and if it were on a tolerable character like the guy who got it in Iris 1 it’d be no contest.